Galapagos Wins $1M Grant to Advance Drug Research in Bone and Joint Diseases

Company will collaborate with the Structural Biology Brussels group over the next two years.!--h2>

Galapagos received €837,000, or about $1 million, from the Flanders government through the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT). The company will use the money over the next two years to elucidate the structure of novel drug targets and related small molecules in its bone and joint disease pipeline.

Galapagos will collaborate with the Structural Biology Brussels group at the Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB). The firm believes that this information will help it design potent and selective drugs and thus potentially improve their efficacy to treat bone and joint diseases.

Most recently, in November 2008, Galapagos inked a deal with Morphosys to discover and develop antibodies in bone and joint diseases. The company also has a deal with Eli Lilly in osteoporosis, which is in the lead-generation phase.

Later in development are partnerships with GlaxoSmithKline in osteoarthritis and Jansenn in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The GSK collaboration was expanded in July 2007, and Galapagos received a €7.5 million milestone in December of that year.

Under the $1 billion collaboration with Jansenn in RA, Galapagos received €3.75 million in January for achieving preclinical proof of concept.